SOMEWHERE SNOUT IS WAITING. Rod Allbright and his alien friends face the biggest mystery of their lives: Where in the wide, wide galaxy is their missing friend Snout, the Master of the Mental Arts? Their death-defying search for their friend leads them across the stars to the Mentat, the mysterious home of the Mental Masters. But the clues they uncover there only deepen the mystery -- and the danger. For Rod and his friends have stumbled into something far bigger and more dangerous than any of them had ever dreamed. At stake are their honor, their lives, their sanity, and (just possibly) the fate of the universe.